Nicholas Udall - Biography

Biography

Udall was born in Hampshire and educated at Winchester College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was tutored under the guidance of Thomas Cromwell, who mentions him in a letter to John Creke of 17 August 1523 as 'Maister Woodall' and he appears again in Cromwell's accounts for 1535 as 'Nicholas Woodall Master of Eton'.

After graduation from Oxford, he taught at a London grammar school in 1533. He taught Latin at Eton College, of which he was headmaster from about 1534 until 1541, when he was forced to leave after being convicted of offences against his pupils under the Buggery Act 1533. The felony of buggery (sodomy), like all other felonies, carried a sentence of capital punishment by hanging, but Udall wrote an impassioned plea to his old friends from Cromwell's household Thomas Wriothesley and Sir Ralph Sadler; then joint principal secretaries of state, and his sentence was reduced to just under a year in the Marshalsea prison. That the pupils in question were not also prosecuted suggests that they were under what was then taken as of the "age of discretion", i.e., 14 years or older. A former pupil, the poet Thomas Tusser, later claimed Udall flogged him without cause.

A Protestant, he flourished under Edward VI and survived into the reign of the Roman Catholic Mary I. In 1547, he became Vicar of Braintree, in 1551 of Calborne, Isle of Wight and in 1554 headmaster of Westminster School.

He died in 1556 and was buried in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of St Margaret's, Westminster.